39. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

What the hell do you write about a movie directed by Luis Buñuel? His films don’t deal directly with social, political, or ethical issues, so a discussion of theme isn’t really relevant. Even on the rare occasions he worked with major stars like Simone Signoret or Catherine Deneuve, he used actors essentially as extensions of his imagination, so a discussion of personalities and performances doesn’t hold much promise either. Also out is the topic of style. Though admired by bold film stylists like Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell, Buñuel was himself one of the most straightforward of directors, his style virtually a definition of the expression “invisible technique.” Yet he was in a way the ultimate auteur director, forging a creative identity not through subject or style, but by vividly showing us his own wholly idiosyncratic view of the world, his personal alternate reality, in one film after another. While other directors have also attempted this, I can’t think of one who has used this approach so prolifically, so adroitly, or so intelligibly as Buñuel.

Like a number of Buñuel’s later films, his 1972 comic masterpiece The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is organized not around a traditional rising and falling arc of action but, like a piece of music, around a theme and a set of variations. Here the theme is six people—three men and three women—trying to sit down for a meal and repeatedly getting interrupted before they can get started. The variations consist of their trying time after time to dine, only to be thwarted again. No matter what the circumstances, they just can’t seem to finish a meal. It’s perpetually delayed gratification, the gastronomic equivalent of involuntary coitus interruptus.

Buñuel returned time and again in his films to certain subjects, and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie touches on just about all of them—sex, death, Catholicism, fetishes and phobias, the convergence of dream and reality. What sets this film apart is that here Buñuel’s preoccupations are wrapped around his trenchant view of the mores and behavior of the bourgeoisie. His six main characters are exemplars of their class, people for whom surfaces and appearances are everything, not just in their homes, grooming and dress, and genteel pastimes, but above all in their deportment. They are unfailingly observant of the social niceties. Even when disagreeing they are decorous and restrained. Their guiding principle seems to be that one must respond to every situation with perfect manners.

It’s an ethos that in this film Buñuel thoroughly trashes. As we know, appearances can be deceiving, and that’s certainly the case with this group of people. In their public lives they might appear flawlessly urbane and mannerly, but their private lives leave a far different impression. Led by Rafael (Buñuel favorite Fernando Rey), the ambassador from a small Latin American country, the men are all involved in a cocaine-smuggling ring. Simone (Delphine Seyrig), the wife of another of the men, is having an affair with Rafael. Simone’s sister (Bulle Ogier) is a bored young woman who’s permanently half sloshed. The cultured Rafael has no qualms about having his country’s secret police kidnap a young female revolutionary, presumably to be interrogated and tortured or even assassinated. Overcome with lust, Alice (Stéphane Audran) and Henri Sénéchal (Jean-Pierre Cassel) keep their dinner guests waiting while they sneak into the shrubbery for a quick one. All those vulgar human urges these paragons of bourgeois refinement so thoroughly repress have to find an outlet somewhere, and beneath the surface their outwardly respectable lives are riddled with hypocrisy and vice.

Lest you get the impression that this film is a somber affair, let me assure you that it most certainly is not. Buñuel treats all these things with the lightest and wittiest touch imaginable. This is one very entertaining film, and a very funny one. The humor is derived not from pratfalls or any of the other traditional comedic devices, but instead from the contrast between the social ideal these people have set for themselves and the sudden irruption of the unpredictable into their lives. Their world is all about control, both of themselves and of their environment, so any intrusion of chaos is bound to have an exaggerated effect. This works on us as well. The first part of the film lulls us into an expectation of normalcy in the lives and behavior of these people, and when that normalcy becomes disrupted with increasing frequency and in increasingly outlandish ways, we’re caught off guard. The effect on us, as on the characters, is not just startling, but through its sheer anomaly very, very funny.

No film director has ever been able to integrate dreams and narrative as seamlessly as Buñuel. Around half-way through the film, he introduces the subject of dreams when a young soldier interrupts the would-be diners to describe the dream he had the night before. From this point on, without ever losing its narrative thread, the film becomes a series of episodes which each culminate in a dream of some act that is shocking to the bourgeois sensibility—an act of extreme public embarrassment, of violence, of the supernatural, of death. The more of these episodes we see, the more the film itself takes on a dreamlike atmosphere and the more we begin to wonder if the entire movie might be a Chinese puzzle of dreams within dreams, all prompted by Rafael’s attack of the nocturnal munchies.

As each dream tops the previous one, Buñuel seems to be pushing the boundaries of conventional narrative logic in the direction of dream logic, in which things don’t always make sense on the rational level yet somehow resonate on an unconscious level. It’s a surrealist vision of art in which images and incidents seem to spring directly from Buñuel’s unconscious and connect unmediated with the unconscious of the viewer, a way of artistic communication so inherently nonverbal that it is nearly impossible to describe concretely. This might all sound frightfully intellectual and rarefied, but Buñuel’s sense of detached amusement keeps the film from developing even the merest whiff of pretension. He’s basically just having fun with the notion that any sense can be made of a universe that is fundamentally absurd.

Of all the images in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, there is one above all others that I have carried with me ever since first seeing the film. At three points—not long after the beginning of the film, again near the middle, and finally right before the end—Buñuel digresses for a short montage of the six main characters strolling down a country road in the sunshine on a summer day. I wouldn’t venture to speculate what Buñuel intends by these images, if such a thing is even possible. But I do know that when I think of this film, it’s the first thing I picture in my mind, those six wandering characters in search of a movie.

How The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie made the Top 100:

#13 Shubs Lahiri

#14 Frank Aida

#14 Maurizio Roca

#20 Jason Marshall

#22 R.D. Finch

#29 Pedro Silva

#33 Sam Juliano

#34 Bob Clark

#41 Dennis Polifroni

#45 Pierre de Plume

#52 Tony D’ Ambra

#54 Sachin Gandhi

#58 Rod Heath

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16 Responses

Great discussion points R.D. and a fine essay on a director that is a definitive auteur. Didn’t he deal with Social issues though? Seems here he’s examining the plague of the bourgeoisie. He criticizes them on multiple occasions for the way they tend to check-out of society. He calls their bluff here and in The Exterminating Angel, where they show their true faces. I guess it’s not a social issue per se, but it’s a social critique for sure.

Jon, Bunuel does certainly deal with class beliefs and differences in many of his films I’ve seen. But I’ve never felt this was the main point of his films, not even this one, that this subject is an offshoot of his preoccupation with perception of reality and the nature of storytelling, not to mention his observations of human behavior and his obvious political viewpoint. These class distinctions are another form of self-delusion like the religious beliefs he so often makes fun of. That’s why I wrote that he doesn’t seem to deal with social issues directly. They are a part of his films. It’s just that they never struck me as the ultimate point of his films, unlike what I think of as “social issues” movies, which focus on one identifiable problem and stick with it. I see Bunuel as more of an amused observer that a reformer. I’m glad you brought this up, though, because it’s an issue I expected to be raised sooner or later, and it’s a fine distinction I didn’t really have time to go into without getting off-track.

Interesting thought process….yes sort of a means to an end I suppose, rather than the direct purpose. I wonder though if it’s just point of view or culture that dictates how one feels this film or his other film’s play regarding societal matters. Would in Europe they view this film differently? I think the whole concept of ridiculing or poking fun at the upper crust of society seems to be tackled more often in Europe than here in the U.S. Think back even to Renoir’s Boudu Saved From Drowning. There is more of a history there with films like this around this issue. Is it that in America we just don’t see any point in examining class divisions? I’m trying to think of other films……like I feel like Tati also somewhat likes to question bourgeois attitudes. Maybe in particular it’s the French. I mean it’s a French word to begin with I suppose, even though Bunuel is Spanish.

Jon, I too see this awareness of class distinctions as being more prominent in European films than in American movies. In French cinema certainly (for Renoir “Grand Illusion” and especially “Rules of the Game” come to mind as well as “Boudu”) but perhaps even more so in British films. I think this is more of an issue for Europeans than it is for Americans. Also, our American egalitarian idealism encourages an attitude of denial about such things, although class or at least income distinction was a big part of the screwball comedies of the Depression. Of course, this ignoring of class divisions is more true of classic films than of more recent ones. As for Tati, I see this theme at play especially in “Mon Oncle,” where M. Hulot’s sister and brother-in-law show almost religious dedication to keeping up bourgeois standards, an attitude which becomes conflated with their worship of modernism.

Yep agree on your points here. I think we try to ignore this whole aspect of class divisions here. Whereas in Europe this issue is a topic of interest. Right and Mon Oncle would be Tati’s most telling example.

I’ve always thought that the image of the walkers was just a nice metaphor for life, a repetition that gives the surrealism a visual pattern or unified look, but then I tend to go with simplest interpretations.
Nice essay on a film that for me is one of Bunuel’s very best.

Mark, if I were to attempt to interpret the scenes of the walkers, I don’t think I could come up with a better reading than yours. The way Bunuel could suggest something so broad with these images (“a nice metaphor for life”) without saying anything really specific is a terrific indication of his mastery of image and narrative and the way he could put these together in an entirely personal way. And I agree that the simplest interpretations of such things are the most satisfying. I suspect that Bunuel engineered those scenes, and a great deal else in his films, to defy literal interpretation.

SAM has lost power and internet capabilities in his home and work place and he wanted me to chime in and inform all you good people, that frequent WITD, that he is fine, everyone is safe and that the haul to get everything up and running in his area is underway. Unfortunately, the damage and the scope of the devastation in our area is of a titanic proportion and may take a day or two be rectified and put back on it’s regular course.

I have informed Sam of some possible outlets in the area that still may be offering internet service (internet “cafes”) and he’s on the job of trying to locate one of these outlets so he can get back to you all in a timely manner.

On a personal level, Sam is fine. His house and family have weathered the worst of the storm with little or no muss to the head. Basically, it all comes down to waiting for the emergency teams to start checking off each area as they go and restore power. The reaction of the emergency power and water units in the areas effected have been astonishing and they are doing the very best under the difficult circumstances.

I am writing this for Sam as my home is one of the few in the area situated in a “cove” (meaning large hills on both sides of my building) and, time and again, sees to be impervious to the hard winds and water fall of massive storms like this. Both Sam and I want to thank you all in advance for your concern and well wishes in this time of crisis. You guys and girls are the best!!!!!!

Thanks for the update Dennis and glad to hear that people are safe! Wishing all the best to you all as you get things back to normal….sooner than later we pray. Looking forward to hearing more from you and Sam and all rather soon!

Like a number of Buñuel’s later films, his 1972 comic masterpiece The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is organized not around a traditional rising and falling arc of action but, like a piece of music, around a theme and a set of variations. Here the theme is six people—three men and three women—trying to sit down for a meal and repeatedly getting interrupted before they can get started. The variations consist of their trying time after time to dine, only to be thwarted again. No matter what the circumstances, they just can’t seem to finish a meal. It’s perpetually delayed gratification, the gastronomic equivalent of involuntary coitus interruptus.

Absolutely brilliant framing R.D., and a master class review of Bunuel’s final unquestioned masterwork, a film that contains so much of his thematic essence, recalling compellingly THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL, but showcasing one of his most acute assaults on the Catholic Church. The “dream logic/unconscious” suggestion is superlative as is the one of the ‘six characters in search of a movie.’ Always thought the priest with the gun was a hoot too.

Thank you, Sam. I saw this movie years before I ever saw “The Exterminating Angel,” and when I did finally get around to it immediately realized how the two movies deal with similar issues but from the opposite direction. In “The Exterminating Angel” the guests get their meal but can’t leave afterwards. Rather than never getting started, they can’t finish. Yet in no way does “Discreet Charm” seem a rehash of that earlier film. One of the amazing things about Bunuel was the way he could use the same elements over and over yet make every iteration fresh. It’s a boon to those who want to write about his films, which in most other ways are quite a challenge to the writer. So much of what he does and the effect it has on the viewer is nearly impossible to put into words. Bunuel was unquestionably one of the most original and unique of all filmmakers. You mentioned the priest in “Discreet Charm.” What fascinated me most was his fetish with gardeners and all the paraphernalia of gardening, one of the strangest and most amusing expressions ever of Bunuel’s anticlericalism.

Separately, I’m relieved to hear you’re managing to weather the storm and am hopeful things will start getting back to normal for you before long.

This is one of those films that I rated highly based solely on my memory of its great impact on me when it was first released. Sorry to say I haven’t seen it since then and have almost no recall of individual moments save one (at the dinner table). Therefore I really appreciate this insightful analysis and now am motivated to seek it out for what no doubt will be an even richer viewing experience. Thanks!

Pierre, thank you. I first saw this film a number of years ago, twice in the space of about a month, and recalled it as being one of Bunuel’s best although I had mostly general, and few specific, memories of it. Then I saw it again about a year ago, after watching and rewatching quite a few Bunuel films in the meantime, so was able to see more clearly its overall place in his career. I’m pleased to say that I’ve enjoyed it every time I’ve seen it, and because the plot gives the illusion of evolving as it goes along, found it quite rewatchable.

‘Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ works on a number of levels, mocking social conventions, the church, and eventually moving its action into overlapping nightmares in which attempts to dine are frustrated by everything from the corpse of a restaurant manager in a nearby room to military manouvers. Mr. Finch is quite right to assert that Bunuel always uproots the most serious matters with a disarming touch, and on balance this is one of his most satirical comedic films. So many of his films are funny, but few could quality as comedies in the conventional sense. This is such a case.

Peter, a great summation of Bunuel’s cinematic sense of humor. When your films have such an absurdist view of the world, there’s bound to be humor in there somewhere, but like you I too don’t find many of his movies to be outright comic in their overall tone. The two I included on my ballot, this one and “The Exterminating Angel,” do qualify as comedies if you use that criterion. Even so, for me the humor and social satire in his films are always under the umbrella of his unique approach to blending narrative and imagery and his endless fascination with the nature of reality and perception.

Just checked the TCM schedule for Nov. and they will be showing “The Exterminating Angel” on Nov. 10. “Simon of the Desert” is scheduled for later in the month. Here’s the link: http://www.tcm.com/schedule/monthly.html

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